Network protocols for use in network nodes communicating on a link level in an Ethernet based network conventionally use different broadcast or multicast messaging techniques for its various communication functions. The broadcast or multicast messages used are spread on a link level across the domain of the Ethernet based network to all network nodes/sites participating in the domain.
Understandably, this may cause large amount of broadcast or multicast data traffic to be generated by the network nodes. This will add to the load on the physical links in the Ethernet based network. Additionally, this will also cause various network nodes to populate its link level address tables with a large amount of link level addresses to different networks nodes all across the domain of the network.
In order to limit the impact of the large amount of broadcast or multicast data traffic that may be caused by the network nodes, there are different techniques for rate limiting the amount of broadcast or multicast data traffic allowed on individual links in the Ethernet based network. For example, a network node may comprise a fixed limit of the amount of broadcast or multicast data traffic it is allowed to distribute, wherein all data broadcast or multicast data traffic that would lead to the fixed limit being exceeded is discarded by the network node. This may also be implemented in order to protect the network nodes from certain types of data traffic.